The fact that many Indian rural dwellings lack toilets and that, therefore, a significant proportion of India’s rural population is forced to defecate in the open has, by facilitating the spread of bacterial infections, profound consequences for public health. Compounding this is the fact that open defecation means that people carry limited amounts of water with them and so, by default, post-defecation handwashing is cursory. This paper, using data from the Indian Human Development Survey, examines the demand for toilets in India and the quality of post-defecation personal hygiene. Income, education, and ancillary facilities in the dwelling—like kitchens, and proper roofs and floors—were the strongest influences on demand. However, ceteris paribus households in more developed villages were more likely to have a toilet than those in less developed villages. This suggests that, over and above specific factors, households’ toilet demand also depended on their social environment In setting out these results, the paper rejects the idea, put forward in several academic papers, that the problem of open defecation in India exists because considerations caste and ritual pollution lead rural Indians to prefer open defecation to toilet use.

许多印度农村居民缺乏厕所，因此，印度农村人口中有很大一部分被迫在露天排便，这一事实促进了细菌感染的蔓延，对公共卫生产生了深远的影响。更重要的是，开放式排便意味着人们随身携带有限量的水，因此默认情况下，排便后的洗手是粗略的。本文使用来自印度人类发展调查的数据，研究了印度对厕所的需求以及大便后个人卫生的质量。住房中的收入，教育和辅助设施（如厨房，适当的屋顶和地板）对需求的影响最大。然而，在较不发达的村庄，比起较不发达的村庄，塞提里人的稀有家庭更容易上厕所。这表明，除特定因素外，家庭的厕所需求还取决于他们的社会环境。在提出这些结果时，该论文拒绝了一些学术论文中提出的印度存在露天排便问题的想法，原因是考虑到种姓和仪式污染导致印度农村人更喜欢露天排便而不是厕所。